French organic winegrower fined for refusing to spray grapes with pesticide

French winemaker Emmanuel Giboulot was prosecuted for not heeding a local directive in Burgundy's wine-growing Cote d'Or area to treat vines against an infectious disease. Photograph: Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images

Scores of Giboulot's supporters, including Green MEP Sandrine Bélier, had gathered outside the court in Dijon to hear the verdict. The judge ruled in line with the prosecution's demand that he should receive a fine of €1,000, with €500 suspended. Giboulot, 51, announced that he would appeal, and said after the hearing: "I still don't feel guilty. It's intolerable today to be forced to hide and to be frightened for taking a stand."

The case has aroused strong feelings in France among the winegrower's supporters and opponents in the wine industry. An online petition criticising the potential penal sentence gathered more than half a million signatures.

Giboulot refused to comply with the official instructions on crop spraying on the ground that the insecticide caused collateral damage among pollinating insects, including bees.

He has cultivated his 10 hectare vineyard according to "biodynamic" methods, which supposedly blend organic farming with the spiritual forces of the cosmos, for the last 30 years.

The Côte D'Or region brought in the new pesticide rules in June 2013 to combat the disease, which first appeared in France in 1950. Giboulot was prosecuted by a regional branch of the French agriculture ministry, under article 251-20 of the rural code, for "failing to apply an insecticide treatment to his vineyard" the following month.

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